Clemens Schadner

Industrial Informatics · April 2026 · 8 min read

What is Inmation - and why are industrial companies betting on this platform?

Production data is generated in abundance - in controllers, sensors, and control systems. The problem: they all speak different languages. Inmation is the platform that, in our experience, closes this gap better than anything else - and on which custom solutions can be built directly.

Anyone working in the process industry - in chemicals, pharmaceutical manufacturing, or energy generation - knows this problem firsthand: production data is everywhere, but rarely where it's actually needed. A temperature sensor feeds readings to a PLC, the PLC communicates with a SCADA system, the SCADA system is supposed to exchange data with the MES, and ultimately everything flows into the ERP - we know this as the classic automation pyramid. But somewhere along the way, the context gets lost.

That's exactly where Inmation comes in. The software platform collects data from a wide variety of sources, can normalize it, and makes it available in real time - as the foundation for analytics, dashboards, and individually developed applications tailored to each company's specific needs.

So what exactly is Inmation?

Inmation is not a classic SCADA system and not a historian in the traditional sense - even though it combines features of both worlds. A more accurate term is Industrial Data Platform: a central layer that receives production data from plant assets, processes it, stores it, and makes it available for downstream applications. And all of this on demand, to support best practices like "Data Ownership" and "Use Case Ownership."

Why classic integration approaches fall short

Many industrial companies tackle the data problem today with a combination of point-to-point connections, manual exports, and custom-built scripts. Or by transferring data to the cloud or a data lake. That works - until a new asset is added, a system gets replaced, or data volumes grow and context continues to erode.

The core issue: OT systems are designed for stability and real-time performance. IT systems are designed for data volume and flexibility. Without a mediating layer, both worlds talk past each other - in different protocols, data formats, and timestamp conventions. We see Inmation as a product that can bridge the gap between IT and OT. This applies even to companies that haven't drawn a hard line between IT and OT - and in our view, that convergence is exactly where the industry is heading.

What sets Inmation apart from a classic historian

Many process companies already run a historian - systems like AVEVA PI are widely used across the industry. Inmation goes further conceptually:

The key difference isn't just in the processing logic - it's in the platform concept itself: Inmation is not an endpoint, it's a foundation. Companies that start collecting data today can build their own monitoring tools, reporting applications, or alarm solutions on top of it tomorrow - without rebuilding their data infrastructure from scratch.

Building custom tools on Inmation

One of Inmation's core strengths is the ability to develop application-specific tools directly on the platform. The Inmation scripting framework lets you integrate business logic, calculations, and analytics into the data layer itself - close to the data, without external middleware.

In practice, this produces solutions precisely tailored to each company's needs - site-specific as well as globally deployed. Some typical examples:

Typical use cases

OT/IT convergence: why this matters now

For a long time, OT and IT operated as separate worlds - for good reason. Production assets are designed for stability, not connectivity. But isolation is no longer an option: energy efficiency, predictive maintenance, quality optimization, and reporting obligations under EU taxonomy all require structured access to production data.

Inmation addresses this tension through a clear architectural decision: OT systems are not touched. The platform reads data from the field without interfering with controllers. This significantly reduces security risks and makes adoption far easier for plant managers and safety officers.